But I will admit that sitting on the train, piping Christmas music through my headphones, and gazing out the window at the sun setting over green fields in December feels a little strange. The weather here in the Vendée ranges from November-like overcast and rainy to alternating rain and sun, like March or April. It doesn't feel like any season to me.
Hungry for some holiday music, or for any music at all, I finally decided to wander into the Conservatoire de la Roche-sur-Yon on Monday. It's a music and theatre school where all ages can take classes and study instruments and voices seriously, parallel to the one that I worked at in Cannes. My hopes of finding an ensemble to play with weren't particularly high since the wind band is a very American tradition; I've never found the equivalent of a community band in Europe.
But la Roche surprised me. Just as I pitched my case to the receptionist, the conductor of la Philar de la Roche-sur-Yon happened to be passing through and he invited me to join on the spot. That evening, I brought my flute au Conservatoire for my first rehearsal...and, exceptionally, the ensemble turned out to be a legitimate wind band, correct instrumentation and all.
You often hear that "music is the universal language", and it's true: without knowing every individual word uttered, the rehearsal, its progression, and everything the conductor described was crystal clear to me. It also turns out that band itself is universal. During rehearsal, there was an excellent volley of snarky comments between the second flutes and the first trumpets; the conductor got all bent out of shape over the oboist who missed her entrance; the percussionists were ignored unless they made a mistake; the conductor got all bent out of shape over the saxophones who collectively missed their entrance; the first flutes decided they were more important than the conductor and decided to drown out his commentary with their tuning ritual. I could have been sitting in college or high school or middle school band; in France, in la Roche-sur-Yon, I found an element of "band" that is universal.
On Tuesday, my luck continued. I went to the médiatheque (library) early, before students got out of school, to search for the first Harry Potter book in French. I've been going every few days to search because kids' books (and Disney movies) are very popular and often checked out; I've had no luck with Harry Potter since I got here. Tuesday, the stars aligned! Thanks to the first few chapters of Harry Potter à l'École des Sorciers, I can bring you the following mots du jour:
pianoter - to drum one's fingers
un Moldu - a Muggle
Vous-Savez-Qui - You-Know-Who
les lunettes en demi-lune - half-moon spectacles
Éteignor d'argent - silver Put-Outer (Deluminator)
un cochon avec une perruque - a pig in a wig
Wednesday was the beginning of Christmas celebrations in la Roche. Most of the lights in the city went up on the first of December, but yesterday was the official tree lighting. A group of us went to Place Nap for the fun; I think we were more of a spectacle than the actual tree lighting. Just by standing in the city center, a group of étrangères all speaking together in French attracted a lot of attention - so much that we were distracted and missed the first illumination of the tree.Wednesday evening was also my first time at something called Café Polyglottes: an informal association in the Vendée that sponsors language evenings in la Roche. Two times a month, you can RSVP online and show up at a café to speak whatever languages you want. It's an opportunity for native French speakers to try other languages with assistants like us as well as international students...and we can speak French with them. At the café, we organized ourselves in groups of English, Spanish, German, and Chinese speakers, and then moved around during the course of the evening depending on what language we wanted to practice. It's very informal, but we were able to meet and exchange stories with many people of all ages; I'm excited to go back for the next one.
Despite the often gloomy weather, we still get some stunning sunrises...and an abundance of rain, of course, leads to an abundance of rainbows.
